In the age of AI, employers are increasingly looking for human skills that can't be replaced by AI, but can complement it.GettyIn today’s artificial intelligence age, it’s easy to assume that mastering ChatGPT and other tech tools will give you a leg up in today’s competitive labor market. But according to workforce experts and hiring leaders, the qualities that increasingly separate top candidates from others aren’t just technical—they’re human.As AI becomes more capable, experts say employers are looking beyond traditional hiring credentials like degrees, job titles, and technical expertise when making new hires. Instead, they’re looking for candidates with essential skills that can complement and utilize AI, but can’t be replaced by it. These include knowing how to lead and work on a team, navigate change, and make sound decisions quickly, just to name a few.“It's sort of an inversion of where we've been historically,” said Brian Elliott, future of work strategist and CEO of the think tank organization Work Forward. “We've usually valued the depth of expertise in a specific field of knowledge and now it's going to be more about the combination of experience and learning mindset and leadership capability. So it's a sizable shift, especially for those who've spent a couple of decades building up just expertise.”With a global LinkedIn survey showing that one in five professionals feel that not having the right skills is making their job search more challenging, Forbes spoke to Elliott, as well as other workplace leaders and an economist, about the skills workers should be working to build right now in order to get ahead. Effective CommunicationAccording to the Graduate Management Admission Council’s (GMAC) 2026 Corporate Recruiters Survey, which included responses from more than 600 global corporate recruiters in 39 countries, communication and problem solving top the list of skills employers most value today. As a former tech leader who worked at Google and Slack, Elliott said he’s seen first-hand just how important communication skills are, even in fields where communication wasn’t always viewed as a key requirement.“When I was leading teams at Google and we would hire engineers, their technical skill and ability to go deep from an engineering standpoint was 95% of the test of what we were looking for,” Elliott said. “Their ability to communicate and collaborate mattered, but kind of on the edge.”Today, that has drastically changed. With AI automating routine workflows and supercharging productivity in some industries faster than others, Elliott said that even in highly specialized and technical roles like engineering employers are looking for candidates who can add human judgment and “communicate effectively up, down, and sideways in an organization” and who can “negotiate boundaries and communicate how they’re aligned on what [the company] is trying to accomplish.” Storytelling Beyond knowing how to communicate efficiently once you get the job, Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s Head of Economics, Americas said it’s important for professionals to know how to communicate up front that they’re the right person for the job. “So when you are updating your LinkedIn profile, when you are writing your cover letter, how are you presenting yourself and showcasing what your skills and abilities are,” he said. One way to set yourself apart from your competition is through the skill of storytelling, said Margaret Burke, PwC’s principal, talent acquisition & development leader.“Your storytelling skills come alive in an interview without you even knowing it because you have to really be able to demonstrate how you can make yourself shine,” she said. On your resume and in the interview process, she said hiring managers are looking for you to not only tell them what you can do, but to show them what you’ve already done by citing clear examples of when you lead a project, solved a problem, or collaborated on an assignment as it relates to the role you’re going for. Even once you get the job, Burke said, storytelling is still essential which is why she views it “as one of the most important human skills” in the age of AI. “Storytelling is so important because AI is going to serve up the information to you, but you’re going to have to know how to apply it, how to storytell it to a client, and how to show and demonstrate where it can have an impact,” she said. AdaptabilityWith AI changing how we work, hire, and navigate our careers, Kantenga said employers are increasingly looking for candidates who are adaptable. In fact, according to GMAC’s Corporate Recruiters Survey, adaptability is the third most valued skill today, behind communication and problem solving. “What does that mean?” Kantenga asked rhetorically. It means an employer wants an employee who does not say, ‘That's not my job.’ They want employees who are able to flex in terms of the functions that they're performing and the tasks that they're able to do and they're also able to adjust very quickly because for some companies the market is moving quite fast in terms of their ability to adopt AI and implement that in their workflows.”In the interview process, your adaptability can be shown by discussing a time when you had to pivot on a project or assignment to meet a new goal, when you volunteered to help out with unfamiliar tasks, or when you took on elements of another person’s job while they were on leave or after they left the company. CuriosityGiven today’s rapid and constant change, curiosity is a key skill employers are looking for in top talent, said Aly Sparks, global head of HR for recruitment firm LHH. This means, she said, knowing how to “solve problems in unfamiliar situations because change right now is so constant that everybody's kind of dealing with unfamiliar situations.”Burke agrees and said that at PwC the main questions she asks herself when interviewing a candidate are, “Do they have intellectual curiosity? Can they be a critical thinker? How can they demonstrate that they are a critical thinker? Do they have good judgment?”All of these questions, she said, help guide her in deciding if a candidate is right for the firm, with curiosity being a top skill because it leads you to think deeper about things and to figure problems out when you don’t know the answer.“You have to be curious because if you're not curious it's going to be a lot harder for you to learn,” Burke said. “I think that skill is so important because even AI is going to help you learn. But if you don't know how to use AI, and you’re curious, then you can go into AI and you can ask it to teach you what you should know or how it could be used.”Want to be more successful? Subscribe to the weekly Forbes Careers newsletter to get insider tips and insights.More from ForbesForbesAI Might Not Bring On A Job Crisis, But A Workforce ‘Mismatch’ CouldBy Courtney Connley-HamptonForbesAI Is Shrinking Entry-Level Jobs: Here’s How Recent Grads Can Stand OutBy Courtney Connley-HamptonForbesAMD CEO Lisa Su Tells Graduates That AI Won’t Decide The Future—People WillBy Courtney Connley-Hampton